Ingest Multicast from across the Internet

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi Everyone,

A peculiar scenario: a client is running a schedule on their local computer and wish to publish (UDP/Mpegts) to their wowza server for streaming. I am aware that multicast packets are discarded at the gateway/periphery but they say they have contacted Wowza and the response is this can be done, redirected them to the standard post:

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-publish-and-play-a-live-stream-mpeg-ts-based-encoder

So is this possible?

192.168.1.200—(224.1.1.1:10000)----->70.80.90.100(Wowza across Internet)------>rtmp(this is no problem, obviously)

This is actually more of a networking question but since connected with Wowza and the client says it is possible according to Wowza, I am posting here. I have also read other related posts but none of relevance or similar situation.

Any help would be appreciated. So will a confirmation that it can’t be.

Thanks

Inderjeet

2

Inderjeet,

You can re-stream mpeg-ts over the internet using Wowza following the MPEG-ts guide, and you can publish mpeg-ts over the internet using Wowza Push Publish, but not multicast. Multicast is only supported on a vLAN that supports multicast.

Richard

3

Hi,

Have you tried sending the stream to the IP address rather than the multicast address?

If you send the stream to the IP address you can then pull the stream in using the .stream file with udp://0.0.0.0:10000.

This is covered in the Publishing the stream section of the tutorial you posted.

Jason

4

Inderjeet,

Wowza supports re-streaming from a mpeg-ts source over udp. If it is traversing the internet I don’t think it is technically a multicast stream, but I’m not sure that matters in this case, Wowza should be able to re-stream it following the mpeg-ts guide

Richard

5

You could use Wowza to schedule, play and publish to rtmp using the scheduler and PushPublish addon

Richard

6

Thanks Richard,

I’m aware of both the possibilities, but this was something different. The encoder, vPlayer, on a client home/office PC was supposed to be broadcasting a multicast UDP stream. They wanted it to be streamed to the Internet via Wowza installed on a different, hosting server. When I told them it is not possible, they pointed me to that mpeg-ts tutorial stating that Wowza has confirmed it works. Apparently some communication gap. So I had to ask you.

Jason, yes, unicast is working already. Thank you for the input though.

Sincerely,

Inderjeet

7

Hi,

I agree Richard. Wowza has no problem as long as the packet is received on its configured ethernet port. I also initially visualized what you’re saying but ideally the multicast packet won’t traverse the Internet, even if we push it out from our periphery or gateway router via port forwarding (outbound, using linux/advanced router), the next router in line will not push it forward because it is a multicast IP range. It may broadcast it networkwide, but not outside it.

What could work, in these kind of cases, is either a VPN or some kind of UDP tunneling. I am not aware of any UDP tunneling tool yet and did some quick search in the morning before starting for office. It looks like people are already working on achieving something like this “UMTP” - http://www.live555.com/umtp.txt

I am going to try to use a “pull UDP” method on Wowza from the client’s IP just to test. Obviously, it may not be a static IP but this is only for testing. I’ll post the result when done which may take a day or so.

Thanks!

Inderjeet

8

Hi,

No it didn’t work. The IP address was not static nor the packets reaching the router. Instead of going in wrong direction, Is there any player anyone aware of, that schedules, plays and publishes to rtmp, (other than VLC)? or any scheduling possiblity with VLC? I know this question should be with VLC forums/support but everything here is related to one requirement.

Thanks!

Inderjeet